[Pnews] People demand Governor Newsom grant mass releases as COVID-19 deaths surge in California prisons
Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Tue Jan 26 13:10:58 EST 2021
PRESS RELEASE
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
Contacts:Courtney Morris courtneymorristz at gmail.com
<mailto:courtneymorristz at gmail.com>
Mohamed Shehk mohamed at criticalresistance.org
<mailto:mohamed at criticalresistance.org>
Barni Qaasim barni at curyj.org <mailto:barni at curyj.org>
Residents demand Newsom grant mass releases as COVID-19 deaths surge in
California prisons
Community members plan to rally and car caravan urging prisoner
releases, starting with elderly, immunocompromised, and trans prisoners
Oakland, CA—On Sunday, January 31st, Californians will hold a car
protest across the Bay Area to demand that Governor Newsom grant mass
releases for the state’s prison population. Formerly incarcerated
leaders, families and friends with incarcerated loved ones, and
activists will gather at 11:00 am at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park in the
Port of Oakland to call on Governor Newsom to urgently address the
ongoing crisis of Covid in prisons.
California prisons have the highest numbers of coronavirus cases of
prisons in the nation and the state has one of the three highest rates
of death in state prisons. While Newsom placed a moratorium on the death
penalty in 2019, people in prisons are being executed by COVID-19
because of governmental inaction, with many more lives at risk. Little
action has been taken, even as health experts have urged significant
steps as the pandemic initially spread. For instance, UCSF infectious
disease experts have urgently called
<https://amend.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/COVID19-Outbreak-SQ-Prison-6.15.2020.pdf>for
the San Quentin State Prison population to be reduced by at least50%.
“A prison sentence shouldn’t be a death sentence,” says Sasha Leitmann,
NJUC. “Governor Newsom needs to act quickly and use his legal authority
to grant mass releases and prevent avoidable deaths. He must show the
courage to turn around California’s dark history of mass incarceration,
starting with releasing the most vulnerable of those
incarcerated--elderly, immunocompromised, and trans individuals--or his
legacy is going to be that of thousands of state executions by Covid-19.”
There have been 45,486 coronavirus cases in California state prisons,
meaning two in five incarcerated people have tested positive. As of
today, 184 people have already died, with December 2020 bringing the
steepest increase in deaths. The infection rate is 5 times higher and
the death rate is 1.7 times higher inside our prisons than in California
overall. Of the lives lost, the average age is 63 and 75% are part of
the Armstrong and Coleman class action lawsuits, indicating that a
majority of those who have died are elderly and have disabilities, which
is disproportionate to the overall CA prison population. Additionally,
forty-nine of those who died were eligible for parole or had release dates.
"Doing time for selling drugs shouldn’t be a death sentence,” says J.
Vasquez, Policy Coordinator for Communities United for Restorative Youth
Justice. “184 people have already died from COVID inside California
prisons and the death rate is increasing dramatically. Overcrowding is
still a huge problem because the prison population is well over 100
percent of design capacity. It is impossible to socially distance, and
incarcerated people are denied adequate access to disinfectant. The only
sensible solution to this problem is to immediately decrease the prison
population."
California has one of the largest prison populations in the country with
95,000 people in state prisons, the vast majority of whom do not have
access to PPE, hygiene supplies, covid testing, or adequate nutrition.
While Newsom released 18,300 people early in the pandemic, the state has
failed to reduce its prison population to the minimum level required to
socially distance. Nine prisons remain at over 120% capacity, and
coronavirus infections have been documented in all 35 state facilities.
UCSF public health experts released an urgent memo this summer
recommending that California reduce its current prison population by at
least 50%. The state has reacted by transferring people from a facility
experiencing a surge, thereby creating a surge in the next facility and
further expanding the crisis of Covid in prisons. The only solution is
mass releases and an end to the transfers, including and especially
transfers to ICE detention centers.
“We demand care not cages,” says Nick Direnzi of the Oakland chapter of
Critical Resistance. “As community members are struggling to have stable
healthcare, housing, income, and food during this pandemic, California
is continuing to spend $16 billion a year to lock people up in cages.
The COVID-19 crisis has exposed how prioritizing imprisonment while
undercutting life-affirming resources means that all of us are less safe
and less prepared to get through this pandemic. Newsom must take
immediate action to release people from prisons to ensure their health
and well being.”
____________________________________________________________
No Justice Under Capitalism is a coalition that came together to draw
public attention to the potential emergency of Covid in California
prisons, and has since been fighting for mass releases across California.
Critical Resistance is a national organization based in Oakland, CA that
works to challenge the idea that imprisonment, policing, and
surveillance keep our communities safe.
Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice CURYJ (pronounced
“courage”) unlocks the leadership of young people to dream beyond bars
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